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Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
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Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
discuss: same sex education
What are your thoughts on same sex education at different levels - elementary/middle school/high school/college? Do you think this is another kind of educational option we should provide in public schools if parents/taxpayers want it? Do you think it would be beneficial to boys or girls to be in a same sex only environment?
Re: discuss: same sex education
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For only sex-education classes? I think it should be an allowed option. When I went to (public) high-school, you could choose a girl's only gym class, which I really liked. I think having same-sex classes may led to more discussion or at least more people asking questions.
I know that in elementary school, girls and boys were separated for "the talk", but then we took health together in middle school and there was nothing else in high school. If a majority of taxpayers want it, I don't see the harm in offering it. Perhaps have same sex ed in elementary and middle and by highschool have it co-ed. I do think sex-ed should be mandatory in high school, too.
From a test-scores standpoint single-sex classes are beneficial, but I don't think that improving schools is as simple as putting girls in one class and boys in another. Single-sex public education is available in the UK & Australia.
I wish that there was a single sex school (public or private) available in our area, but there is not. I went to all-girls school for 6-12 and feel it helped me immensely in many ways.
I meant segregated schools or classes for general education, not just sex-ed, sorry.
I went to a women's college and I feel like there were a lot of benefits for me, academically and emotionally. When I briefly considered becoming a high school teacher and shadowed a high schoool teacher for a day, I was shocked at how much time she spent on behavior issues, most of which were inapparopriate and distracting flirting between girls and boys and then other kids glommed on, etc.
That's a really interesting observation, and good point. I went to public from elm to HS and then an all womens college and like Kathryn, I really do feel like I benefited from it, but I was (and still kind of am) an introvert and in large crowds I tend to not be very outspoken. So for me, in college, having a smaller class size where I felt more comfortable (there were some seriously mean spirited boys in my classes all the way from elm to HS), I participated much more and I feel like it helped me get more out of the college experience. I think putting this in place in public schools would be very difficult especially when it came to funding it. If I had a daughter and the option to send her to an all girls school, I would.
I'm curious if a man's views on this would be much different. I can't think of any all male colleges out there anymore. I know there are a few in Baltimore (Boy's Latin, Gilman, Calvert), I'm curious how adult males that went to those schools feel about their experiences and the issue?
I am a HUGE proponent of same-sex education. I went to an all-girls high school and I adored it. Cliques? sure. cattiness? sure. Fun? yes. It was a smaller school so its going to be a different experience. H went to a very large public school in a fairly rural area, so his experience in HS was drastically different from mine, and neither were bad, so I want to make clear that I'm not saying co-ed is bad.
I believe that same-sex education is immensely beneficial for girls, for self-esteem, behavioral, leadership, educational reasons. I can't really think of anything against it. I will send any daughters I have to same-sex for a least one period of their education - be it middle, elementary, etc.
My brothers went to a same sex HS and they also both loved it. They are very different people and were only a year apart and had very different experiences, but both loved it. Their school was much bigger (closer to a thousand) but when i ran into their principal years after they graduated, he knew my brothers by name and knew where they had gone to college. I was so impressed by that ha.
Some of the same-sex schools are fairly integrated interestingly enough - if you go to Roland Park Country School, you could take classes with boys from Gilman and Boys Latin, so there is still a fair amount of interaction between the sexes.
Now all that gushing said, I don't really think its the role of public education to segregate. Maybe some day, when there is more funding and all the other problems are fixed, then sure, let's segregate by sexes. But right now I think for public education there are bigger fish to fry, so to speak. I believe strongly in single-sex education so I am willing to pay for that for my children.
alot of the benefits you guys are mentioning are also benefits of smaller schools, not necessarily - single sex. Do you think just making schools/classes smaller would be a benefit?
This is a good point. I can't speak for same sex education, as I always went to public school, but my classes were almost always pretty small. I think it made the biggest difference in college. I rarely had classes so large that you couldn't just jump in with a question if you needed help or were confused. A lot of my friends went to larger schools and I remember them saying there were hundreds of people in their classes and if you had a question, you couldn't really speak up and say anything, and you had to sit like a football field away from the professor, haha.
well, yes and no. For me personally, and for my brothers, the benefits were directly derived from the single-sex education. I've attended small schools, i've had tiny classes (5 students total in most of my Spanish classes in college), and I've attended medium sized public school. My SSE experience was different - but I do realize that not everyone likes it as much as I did.
In terms of smaller schools/classes - again, yes and no. When our parents went to school the classes were huge (my mom had 45 kids in her first grade class) and things were fine - so my inclination is to say smaller class size alone is not the issue. BUT that inclination overlooks the fact that society has changed drastically in many ways so education is going to have to change, so smaller classes I think would be much better now. Or at the very least, you know, funding, so teachers can be paid better and everything else.
I know this thread is looking for my personal opinion, I have the beginnings of a migraine, so I don't want to think right now, but I did want to contribute. There were some studies in the 90s that concluded that same sex education is beneficial for girls, especially in the math and sciences, but that there is no significant benefit for boys.
I think it was done by Myra and David Sadker, although I could be wrong.